FINDING A PLACE FOR FALSTAFF

LANGUAGE AND CREATIVITY IN THE AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH CURRICULUM

AATE National Conference. Melbourne 3–6 December 2011

Curriculum documentation, however well intentioned, can often seem fairly lifeless, focused on stern precepts about what should be taught to enhance the social and economic well being of the nation. More often than not the role of the imagination and the place of creativity appear as afterthoughts. Fortunately, we as teachers recognise that without their manifestation in the playful, the exploratory, the celebratory, the problematic, the idiosyncratic, the irreverent and even the subversive no English curriculum can have any animating, or animated, life.

With such an awareness in mind the Conference Committee has found its inspiration for the 2011 AATE Conference in David Malouf’s 1998 Boyer lectures and especially in his invocation of Shakespeare’s Falstaff as ‘the great embodiment in our literature of the spirit of carnival…a necessary part of what it is to be alive.’ Malouf argues that ‘finding a place for Falstaff’ and ‘acting imaginatively in the spirit of lightness he represents, is the way to wholeness; and wholeness, haleness, as the roots of our language tell us, is health'.

Acting imaginatively, the spirit of lightness, wholeness, health are necessary, though elusive, values for an English curriculum. For, as Malouf reminds us, language is much more than the content of a curriculum, the particular grammar we teach or the texts we choose. It is the medium through which we articulate our consciousness, and, in so doing, make our meanings, construct our identities and create our communities.

The 2011 AATE Conference will provide an opportunity to explore and celebrate the creative potentialities of an Australian English curriculum which meets the needs of students in the 21st century. The conference committee looks forward to receiving contributions to the program from English teachers and educators across the nation—and beyond.

For Malouf's lectures, ‘A Spirit of Play: The Making of Australian Consciousness’ see: www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures/stories/1998/1715600.htm